It’s almost 2 weeks since I started an experiment on jimsmarketingblog.com. I wanted to see what REALLY happens when a blog offers a valuable, ‘do-follow link’ to everyone who comments there.
What does ‘do-follow’ mean?
In brief, every time you comment on my blog, you will receive a special kind of link back to your website or blog. This link actually tells Google and Co to visit your website or blog – which can really help your Search Engine Optimisation.
Sadly, the vast majority of blogs (over 99% apparently), offer ‘no-follow links’; which tell Google and Co NOT to follow the link to your website or blog. They do this to stop the mighty Google penalising them with a lower page rank and also to stop spammers targeting their blogs. Links from do-follow blogs like mine are a lot more valuable, so spammers apparently target them more (or do they? – Read on!)
Here’s what’s happened thus far!
Comment numbers are about the same
This surprised me. The percentage of people commenting here is, surprisingly, no higher than it was BEFORE I gave do-follow links! The original post, where I announced I was offering do-follow links, has now had well over 200 comments. However, the number of comments on my posts since then, have only grown at the same rate as my readership.
Links have doubled in 12 days
There has been one amazing, immediate improvement, since offering do-follow links! You can call it the power of attraction, karma, sewing and reaping – but the number of people linking to this blog has literally doubled in just 12 days!
No increase in Spam
Another surprise is that I have not seen any increase in the amount of spam I get, not yet anyway. I am getting the odd idiot try to use the comments section of various posts, to advertise their latest wonder product – but that’s nothing to do with the do-follow links – that’s just what some misguided people do on any well read blog. These are deleted immediately. Everything else has been caught by my spam filter. I use the Akismet plugin for WordPress.
Google isn’t happy with me
Google traffic here had been increasing until I started offering do-follow links. Now, it has stopped increasing and has actually dropped slightly. That said, all search engine traffic combined accounts for less than 1% of the people who come here.
In case you were wondering, the 4 biggest sources of people to this blog are:
1. Direct traffic
2. Twitter
3. StumbleUpon
4. Links from other blogs and websites
Conclusion
It’s still very early days, but I have seen nothing to stop me offering do-follow links. The readership is growing extremely well and I have attracted over a thousand new links; since offering do-follow links to my readers.
The lesson thus far, has been that the Internet is actually about PEOPLE and not about Google or any other company! If people like your website or blog, and you market it correctly, they are going to share it with their friends and contacts. If the people at Google are as smart as I think they are, they will catch onto this and stop trying to punish blogs that, like mine, are committed to helping others.
So, the experiment continues!
What do you think?
If you have any ideas or opinions regarding what I am doing I would love to know!
Equally, what have YOUR experiences been with linking, Google or blogging in general – share them with my readers and myself in the comments section.
After reading about your success with this, and following your comments about it on Twitter, I decided to offer “do follow” links on my blog as well. I’m just starting to try and build traffic to my blog, so we’ll see what happens.
BTW, my Twitter username is avfguy – so follow me! (twitter.com/avfguy)
Google likes to slam things that are legal and they do not like. the Google not like part that drives me crazy. It is a dictatorship with them, for no reason they will cut your PR, I know last October they cut millions of PR rankings because of link selling, like they throw a fit and I will get them by reducing their PR.
@smartmarketing
Jim,
This has been an interesting experiment! I am pleased to see that your spam rate has not gone up, as I know that was a concern. As for Google, who cares. You are building such a great following and fostering so much confidence in the power of conversation. That is “True” networking at its finest. Great job! Please keep us updated on future developments.
Cheers!
Virginia @Cars4Causes
Russell,
Hope the new blog’s a success!
Keith,
Google is becoming the focal point or lots of website owners and bloggers. That HAS to be wrong!
Virginia,
Hi Virginia. The whole point of this is to develop a small business marketing community – built around people.
Linking as an SEO tactic will be less valuable as Google continues to innovate in the Personalized Search area. Once get into Behavior and Intent based search, page rankings will be based more on your web history than linking.
Hi there an interesting article, I don’treally take my blog that seriously at the moment,
I’m just using it as an online diary also use it to post things I have picked up from the emailsI receive and re-blog them If I feel that people find them interesting.
I also use it to post my observations when I’m out and about, I love observing people, sit me on a park bench and I’d happily observe people all day long, as long as the sun is out
Twitter username:@wizard1974uk
Very interesting results, I too would have imagined that more people would comment for link building purposes. Please keep us informed of the results as time goes on, I would be very interest to know if Google starts visiting your site on the regular basis as it did in the past. Well done on the bold move Jim.
Like anything else, any kind of ‘interaction’ a person can get, the happier they may be…even if this person considers himself/herself a recluse. It’s part of the human experience, isn’t it…?
With this thinking in mind, I have personally found that the more I share, the more I am likely to get some kind of worthwhile feedback. To me, this kind of ‘experiential marketing’ is very much like the idea of ‘paying it forward’ – the more you give equals the more you get.
Kind of like practicing some good karma online.
With your experiment, I believe you are not only paying it forward, but introducing the idea of actively creating interactions online…which, to me, equals to some pretty decent karma online.
This is great information for bloggers. I am trying this out now. Hope my results are closely the same.
@iKyleR is my twitter username!
Karl,
I think people probably just don’t realise that this blog offers do-follow links – or they are unaware as to the value of them?
Interesting! I didn’t know any of that. I haven’t had much luck with StumbleUpon, any tips for using that?
I found this through Twitter myself: http://twitter.com/wooleyduck
Charity,
Thanks for the comment.
There are already lots of posts about how to use SU. I wonder if anyone would like to recommend one to you?
This is strange, my Google traffic account to about 46+% of all visitors and I never seen drop in numbers due to DoFollow implementation. And I’ve been doing it for well over year.
Very interesting test Jim. Looking forward to hearing about your results over the next few weeks. t/ @RoyMorejon
Alex,
Thanks for the comment. Maybe it’s a ‘blip’ – as I said, it’s only 12 days since I begun the experiment and only a few months since I started the blog.
It will be interesting to watch over the coming weeks / months Alex.
Hi Jim,
Love the article, will be adding do follow to my blog.
I’m still new at this and you’ve been helpful to me in twitter as well.
@debworks is my twitter name!
thanks,
Deb
Glad I read this, I had no idea what the whole do-follow thing was about. I think I’ll turn that on for mine as well.
Deb,
I hope it works for you!
Jim, I completely agree with you. My company has been building commercial blogsites for years. We use do-follow links 99.9% of the time.
Google (and other) engines are in the business of finding (and recommending) quality content on a given subject matter and they change their heuristics all the time (more than once per day, on average.) Anyone that believes they know a magic trick (like follow vs. no follow) for influencing Google is mistaken.
Our philosophy has always been: create quality, on-message content and let the search engines do their job. The search engines will continue to adapt and get better at what they do.
Any attempt to develop content *for* search engines is misguided because the search engines change so quickly. But what does not (and will not) change is that search engines are looking for quality, on-message content.
@faseidl
Yeah, google is pretty much a necessary evil. I don’t like that they’re in my email scanning it for keywords, but I deal w/ it b/c I like gmail. And I don’t like that they track my search history, but google is convenient. They’re going to rule the world soon, i just know it. It’s really scary how much power they have over us, they have us in the palm of their hands pretty much. Anyway, I found you via twitter and I plan on checking out all of your resources. Thank you for this great service!
Andrea/ @MakingMusicMag
F.Andy Seidi,
Thanks for that. I agree that it’s not always a great move to write or develop content JUST for search engines.
I do some SEO here, but will alter my style of writing for Google – I write for people.
I would love to initiate a linkback to the people who comment on my blog. It’s not many but they are all interesting and I would love to help them out! My Twitter name is @BlackPearlCreat. Now I just have to figure out how to do it…
Thanks, I’ll have a look around for the SU info.
I am definitely interested in seeing how this works out for you in the long run. I would like to implement but still a little hesistant. Thanks for being the brave one here! @jonmikelbailey
Hi Jim,
I’ve been following your Blog since you started the DoFollow and thanks for posting the update today. It proves building any kind of business is about relationships, which is the key success and you have proven this. It’s prompted me to review, update and renew my blog, Thanks Jim!
@seandb1
do follow links will be added to Adjoke shortly. Thanks for the tip.
@pcrowe
One of your readers, Kevin Webb, was kind enough to give me instructions on how to follow suit, Jim. (I didn’t realize until your post and Kevin emailed me that I had a “no follow” system set up in my blog.)
I was interested in hearing your results before I followed your lead, so THANK YOU for sharing this with us!
You rock!!
Jeannette
What you’ve done here really IS amazing, and very impressive! It’s nice to know that you CAN piss off the mighty Google and NOT have to worry about disappearing off the internet….
Thanks for doing this, and thanks for keeping us posted on the results! : )
@carolehayes
Great post and while listening last evening to the pre-launch pitch for a software package named “Traffic Crusher” I heard the creator say basically the same things about Google that you’re discovering. Yes, SEO can get you traffic… and then, there are a LOT more ways that work REALLY well. What YOU are doing proves that emphatically! Keep up the great work and please continue sharing!
David Perkins (aka: trafficmechanic)
follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/trafficmechanic
SEO is important, but it’s not everything.
I use a number of SEO tools on this blog – but it’s a very small part of what I do.
Marketing seems to work just fine.
Great post and great site Jim. I’m new to marketing via the web and am definitely dependent on Google at the moment for marketing wedding photography. Just discovered Twitter and am also looking at it’s potential for marketing Indian weddings. Early days. Follow me on
http://www.twitter.com/ralphphotograph
a-HA! I wrote a blog post about dofollow about a week or so ago based upon an article I read by a Tweep of mine. I’m wondering if you have another article on the subject. In any case, very good advice thank you. I already have you on my Twitter, which is how I found this great article. (@womanintraining) Thanks!
I’m going to edit my dofollow post to include a link to this post.
[...] ETA here’s a link to a good no follow/do follow article by a Tweep of mine Jim Connolly] [...]
I’m about 6 months into this Twitter and Social Media thing and I find two types of users… people who are using it as a tool to vent and people who use it to communicate with clients/customers/friends in a way that is always available (until Twitter went down yesterday!)
I started a research on the use of social media to drive your at home business, by using free tools available online, and if used properly, will help drive revenue for you. I became a home-business owner, in Tastefully Simple, to try this philosophy out to see if it works.
Wish me luck!
@brandyfavilla
@tastefullysimpl
I am new to this and a bit overwhelmed at times. I had read earlier that the links were a no no. How do you set up a do follow? Is there an automatic response through twitter? or is it something you do manually with each individual who follows you?
Thanks for all your help.
Newbie twitter Lea
http://www.twitter.com/mindmatrix
Thanks for the update, Jim. I was thrilled to pay forward a kindness the other day. You’re paying it forward with dofollow. The real world is not the matrix that tries to engulf us…there’s a better world right behind the matrix.
I welcome new twitterers at http://www.twitter.com/CoachEva1
Some excellent comments here thus far – thanks to everyone!
Interesting experiment, Jim! Do you think the long-term effects of this could harm the growth of your blog? I’m looking forward to reading about the future results of this!
Brandon,
Good question! Certainly not in the short or medium term; as a brand new blog doesn’t get stacks of search engine traffic even if it plays the Google game.
Medium to long term – yes, it could. I don’t believe it will though.
If more people did this Jim maybe Google would be forced to rethink.
It’s just a thought…
Best,
Nicola
Nicola,
I think Google are a very smart company. They will adapt, but only if needed.
Good point but they’re not stupid. If they see a trend there’s a good chance they will respond.
Nicola
Very interesting post. I will continue to follow this I’m curious as to what the results will be.
http://twitter.com/the_gman
Hi Jim~ methinks u underestimate how savy most of us bloggers and blog readers are with regards to plugins and the value of promotion.
Once it “clicks” that commenting on another’s site can lead to their readership visiting your site (as well as other benefits) I think u will find the numbers steadily increasing.
There are so many internet nd small business marketers out there on the web. It took me a week of scoping yours and others sites to decide that your blog is of more value to me to visit regularly.
others will follow~its all part of that attraction factor (which may have something to do with your John Travolta likeness
Char,
Thanks for the comment. However, I think you managed to completely miss the point I was making. I am not looking for traffic from Google – It’s the exact opposite!
The numbers are already here – Because the blog is being marketed without the help of Google. This means there was no long wait while Google decided what to do.
I started marketing this blog just 11 weeks ago and have not spent a penny advertising it – Yet it’s already attracting more readers (and more comments) than many blogs have managed after years of playing ‘the google game.’
Can you offer “do-follow” links on Blogger?
Jim, on Twitter you mentioned that the majority of your traffic comes from sources other than Google. So, how much did the drop in Google traffic affect your blog?
You can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/midnighttango
Jim, Care to share with us (perhaps in another post) what steps you’ve taken to market your blog successfully (already know about Twitter, of course)?
Thanks,
@avfguy
Tatiana,
I know very little about Blogger, though maybe another reader will be able to answer you question?
The drop in Google traffic meant nothing, because they were not giving me anything much to begin with.
Russell,
That would be a VERY long post!!!
I have studied marketing for over 22 years and put everything I have learnt into developing this blog.
The blog is also only just barely getting started – so, as one of my old bosses once told me;
“Watch what I do – if it works, copy it!”
Jim …
I’m just glad to follow someone with 22 years of experience in marketing (since I have the same in sales manager development), and I’m learning a bunch just from reading your articles. Thanks for thinking of others and not GOOGLE with what you are doing.
Regards,
Lance @salesmanageslns
Jim, just subscribed to your newsletter. Look forward to reading more articles on your blog and learning from a pro.
Thanks
Lea @mindmatrix
Jim~ I was not referring to Google, but to your surprise that comment numbers haven’t increased.
I am very pleased to hear your experiment is working. And, even more pleased to see that your method was totally transparent and upfront.
Thanks again for another incisive post. I have been grappling with whether to deactivate no-follow on my blog for a little while. I always found it strange that new bloggers aren’t more encouraged to deactivate early on given that they haven’t built much credibility with Google at that stage anyway. It becomes a bit more tricky for more established blogs. I admire your approach to this issue.
Always welcoming new followers
Apologies for a second comment but I foolishly misspelt my twitter account – http://twitter.com/publicspend
Hi Jim,
I’ve been using do-follow on my blog since I started blogging for the very reason you mention above – the Internet is about people and not Google. Also, this posts fits well with your previous post about people not hits.
I’d rather have less traffic but some quality readers who want to consume my information than a load of traffic taking up my bandwidth who don’t want to be on my site.
I think that was an excellent idea to write a post outlining the fact that you allow do-follow on your blog.
Good on ya!
Trish
fascinating follow-up.
That is truly amazing. Google still accounts for the majority of my visitors. As a real estate agent though I think many people are searching through gooogle (or other search engines) to find real estate.
@floridafuture
Although Google runs most of the internet out there and continues to expand, Google isn’t that only option to dominate on the internet. I do have to agree that quality people make the difference and not traffic. If you are well known from “word of mouth”, in my opinion, that is using the internet!
@iKyleR
Some great comments here – Thanks for contributing.
It’s also great to see so many familiar @usernames!!!
Jim, this is an absolutely GENIUS idea! It’s not about site rankings, it’s about people, and your idea clearly illustrates it! Great job and thanks for sharing so many wonderful ideas!!!
Interesting post! I’m from Twitter:
@gailkonopbaker
Interesting experiment! I’d never even heard of ‘do-follow’ before, so we’ll see what, if anything, it does. I’m a fairly fresh blogger and am more excited about writing and reading others’ blogs than SEO – this certainly can’t hurt anything!
Oh, and I’m @kate__k on Twitter
Thank you for pointing out what the “follow” vs. “do not follow” is really all about.
I’ve only been doing this for about six months, and I’m learning everyday that I have a lot left to learn.
My specialty is the Environment, but I’m learning more about blogging than I ever knew possible. Thanks for the great article.
@TwilightEarth on Twitter
Very cool experiment.Link are huge for website and if you can find no-follows, increased awareness will result.
@andrewosterberg on twitter
I just StumbledUpon this article with a thumbs up. Seems like a good idea to me!
Isn’t sharing ideas and what we find of interest a big part of social media?
Google will adjust, they are smart and fast folks.
Hi Jim,
I hope that I’ll be able to follow suit. I am going to look at your previous posts to find out how to fix the no-follow in my blog. I’m so glad that this is working out for you and hope that I will also have similar luck, but I have only just begun and won’t have any results for a while.
On Twitter, I am aptly lisanardionline. Talk to you soon.
Lisa
Hello Jim,
Thank you for following me on Twitter at @idaconcpts. Your blog writing style is very down-to-earth and down-to-business. Congrats on making points in a simple, concise manner.
Regarding your marketing experiment. My experience at my web analytics blog is:
1. Stumbleupon
In just one day, I received more than 400 hits, which is a lot for my humble blog with a total of 3000+ readers to date.
2. Search Engine Optimization
Having a blogroll of relevant blogs of marketing and web analytics; linking keywords to relevant websites; tagging and creating keywords, are just a couple of the ways that I am able to make Google like me.
3. Referrals from friend blogs.
4. Links from social networking sites such as Twitter, Linkedin, Techhui (local Hawaii IT association).
Please keep us posted on your experiment.
Jim, I follow your blog daily and follow you on Twitter. Just really getting into all this and feel like I found the leader right away. Thanks.
Links are very important, and I really appreciate that you have chosen ‘do follow’.
Some links are better than others. Links from high page rank sites are more ‘valuable’.
I use seo and articles and forum comments to drive traffic to my websites and blogs, recently I’ve added Twitter to my arsenal.
Daily effort to create links to your site really does pay off.
Glad I found you.
http://www.twitter.com/lynnelee
@lynnelee
Hi Jim,
Interesting post and experiment, what I am not sure is exactly why you would want to have do-follow links when it there is the possibility of them harming your site, should it link to any site that Google or indeed some of the other search engines do not approve of? I guess the fact that you are getting more people linking back to your blog could more than compensate for this and if you manually weed out the bad eggs it could really pay off…
Think I have talked myself into the answer here!
This is a great post since there is lots of debate to ‘nofollow’ or not.
It raised a good question that I hadn’t pondered yet and that is if backtrack and linkbacks count in the do-follow process?
I suppose if the blog is entirely do-follow than that is an extra incentive to get others to link back to your site.
Twitter/Stumble: jpearce01
I was never receiving all that much traffic from Google to begin with, or any traffic at all, so I went on my campaign of first commenting on other people’s blogs that I had an interest in, then adding CommentLuv for dofollow links. Since then, I’ve had a drastic increase in followers and commenters, and my Google traffic has remained the same. This works for me.
You definitely have lowered your executional risk by going with a strategy that isn’t dependent on the largesse of search engines.
I’m curious about your change in Google traffic. Are you measuring that in absolute numbers or as a percentage of total traffic sources? Just wondering if do-follow is increasing traffic from other sources, so Google as a percentage is down.
Even if the absolute numbers are down, that’s not entirely surprising. Commenting for link juice strikes me as one of those practices that Google would like to stamp out, even though they’ll take many good, legitimate comments with them.
Thanks Jim – very helpful guidance. Now if I only have hours to keep exploring your site today. I’ll read bit by bit or blog by blog.
Thank you! Cindy
http://www.twitter.com/Method3AM http://www.twitter.com/CindyColoma
“The Internet is actually about PEOPLE and not about Google or any other company!” that exactly what it should be. Good article!
I’ve been reading a lot about this lately and it seems it’s been working well for lots of bloggers. Well done.
I am wondering if perhaps I am getting BETTER traffic. Maybe people that follow links like yours are more prone to pay their authors (bloggers) with ad investigation and remarks and checking out the sites more, digging or saving links????
Just a thought that occurs. I know I get some google traffic but I am not sure how many actually stay around long enough to comment on articles. Tracking is out of my control on ehow.
I would like to experimient sometime after I reach my next moentary plateau. ALRADY
Have you looked at the new incoming links and the anchor text they use? I know there are sites that list blogs with DoFollow policies but that probably wouldn’t account for all of them.
It would be interesting to know what the increased links are targeting on your blog.
[...] – at least in the short term. Jim’s Marketing Blog saw no increase when they started their DoFollow Internet Marketing Experiment. Even if we do, deleting it is a small price to pay for increasing [...]
I HUG my Twitter! I heard that Twitter is going to take over Google…..now, where did I hear that from? Regardless, although I am not blacklisted, I pissed off the Almighty Google too – by not updating removed blog links in my robots.txt >,<
[...] ETA here’s a link to a good no follow/do follow article by a Tweep of mine Jim Connolly] Share and [...]